Metro Awakening and Batman: Arkham Shadow are the future of VR gaming

digitaltrends.com:

After years of waiting, VR adaptations of iconic video game franchises are at a turning point with the release of Batman: Arkham Shadow and Metro Awakening.

While it has been over a decade since the Oculus Rift seriously kicked off VR gaming as a worthwhile subsect of this medium, it has taken a while for it to hit console and PC gaming’s AAA quality level. If a flatscreen game or series got adapted for VR, it was with a short and simple tech demo-like release or a VR conversion of an older game beholden to the design constraints of a classic. This still yielded some good results, but it meant VR gaming lacked an identity within hardcore gaming franchises and was relegated to novelty spinoff status.

Within the last month, Batman: Arkham Shadow and Metro Awakening both released, indicating that something has changed. These full-fledged AAA VR experiences aren’t just novelty VR conversions of beloved console franchises, but worthwhile games of their own. If VR gaming is going to continue to stay relevant, it needs more games like Batman and Metro.

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The best kind of VR adaptation

To see how far VR gaming has come, we simply need to compare 2016’s Batman: Arkham VR to 2024’s Batman: Arkham Shadow. Although Arkham VR was developed by Rocksteady and featured some cool moments, it could be beaten in just a couple of hours and did not match the game flow of titles like Arkham City or Arkham Knight. A game like that certainly had its place in the early days of VR, but in 2024, expectations are much higher.

Thankfully, Arkham Shadow delivered. It is still much more linear than Arkham Knight, but from a gameplay and narrative perspective, it does a significantly better job at matching the heights of Rocksteady’s trilogy. Combat is emphasized and still has a